Crysania's 16-year old tongue and its "mutilation"

it started with my ears. my sister had seven total earrings, and being a
younger sister, i wanted to do what my elder sibling had done. so when i
was 11, i re-pierced my ears after they had grown back together from lack
of wearing jewelry. i did it myself...and it wasn't so bad...i sat
there and talked on the phone with my cousin while i did it...

anyway...from that point, i did another 4 ear piercings myself...

then, when pierced navels were really trendy...everyone in my eighth grade
class was piercing their own...and so did i...at that point, it was just
my style, so i did it...
unfortunately, it got ripped out the next day...OWCH!!!! that's not the
point,though.

when i was about 12, i saw this chick on the maury povich show who was
getting her second tongue piercing done on national television..i thought
to myself,"hey that looks perty kool...but i don't think i would ever
have the balls to do it"...

a few years later, that girlie on the real world got hers done...and that
was that, i HAD to get my tongue pierced before everyone else around
here got theirs done...
i was no longer a trendie, but a trend setter...

i thought on it for a long time...and i even broke up with a boyfriend
over it...but
hey, c'est la vie!

about three weeks after my sixteenth birthday...i got the check that my
dad always sent me for my birthday...hehe...i knew that was how i would
pay for the piercing before the check ever came. anyway...i was sixteen
and very naive about the piercing laws in north carolina(where i
unfortunately live), so i didn't know that there are no state laws of any
kind regulating piercing, so i went to the one place i knew they wouldn't
ask me for i.d.(i thought that you had to be eighteen). it was a little
place in the mall that did hair and really bad tattoos, too. i should
have known better, but...well...i had a momentary lapse of judgement in
that area. anyway...i got my boyfriend at the time to go with me,
because that waas something i just couldn't go through alone, and i knew
my mother didn't want me to have any "bizarre" piercings, so she wouldn't
go with me. we went into the shop, i took a deep breath and told the
witchy looking woman behind the counter taht i wanted my tongue pierced.
she was like, ok, and so we went to the upper level of the shop where
they did all the body modification, and i sat down in the chair. it took
about an hour for me to talk myself into it because i was so nervous. at
last i said,ok...then she brought out the clamps, the needle, and a 14 ga
barbell. the fact that the bar and the needle looked so big made me even
more apprehensious, but i sat down, rinsed my mouth out with listerine,
took another deep breath, and stuck out my tongue. she put on a pair of
gloves, and clamped my tongue. then she gave the clamps to my boyfriend,
and told him to hold my tongue really straight. at the same time, i was
trying to hold his other hand...i closed my eyes,sqealed like a piggie,
and WHAM!!! i was pierced...then she put the jewelry through, and that
annoyed me more than anything. then i threw up....i think that all that
anticipation made me toss my cookies.....after i had rinsed the barf out
of my mouth, i discovered that i wasn't bleeding as i had expected it
to...it never did bleed like almost every other tongue piercing i've
ever seen done(i'm apprenticing now).

i was surprised because it didn't hurt at all...it was the anticipation
that got me.
i stuck out my tongue, and well, there it was...a 1 1/2 inch long, 14 ga
barbell sitting what appeared to be square in the middle of my poor, sore
tongue.

that night, after my boyfriend went home, i was actually able to eat a
little piece of a stromboli with my friends, who were all either
impressed or grossed out. i was just fine, and could speak perfectly
until the next morning...i got up, rinsed with listerine from the giant
jug that was to later make me famous among the administrators at my high
school, and boy did that thing ever ache...not only did it ache, but it
throbbed...and it was sooooo swollen that i could barely speak. lemme
tell ya, for someone who talks a mile a minute, that SUCKED!!! i went
out the next night, which was a saturday, hungout with my friends, and
mumbled a bit, and then i came home, rinsed and went to bed.
no problems.

the next night, however, i went out with my guy again, and i came
home...and i musta been talking really funny, or really obviously trying
to hide something because as soon as i came in the door, my mom started
giving me the third degree....

i was busted. she was sooo not happy about it, because she had
expressly forbidden me to get my tongue(or anything else, for that
matter) pierced. we fought about it for a couple of days, and eventually
she gave in, on the condition that i didn't get anything else done, get
my hair dyed any bizarre color(like pink or blue), and didn't get any
tattoos until i was either 18 or not living in her house(whichever came
first). that was fine by me, as long as i didn't have to take the thing
out, because, first of all, my tongue was still really, really sensitive,
and second of all, i had paid 75 dollars for the thing(which i later
found out was a total rip-off because all the other shops in town only
charge 60), and dammit, if i took it out, she was gonna pay me my 75
bucks!

anyway, we finally came to a compromise, and today, four years later, i
still have it.

the really weird part was going to school on monday.
i was miserable when i woke up on monday morning... i was starving,
because i had run out of chocolate pudding, and i wasn't about to eat
soup for breakfast(that was about all i could eat for a few days), i was
also really scared to brush my teeth because it had hurt so bad when i
did it the first time( i kept hitting my barbell with the toothbrush). i
did it anyway, because i can't abide a set of unbrushed teeth...YUCK!
then i had my lovely morning listterine rinse...even more yuck!...and went
off to school to show off my tongue. i carried around a very large
bottle of listerine for the first couple of weeks because i didn't have a
smaller bottle, and that became how people around school recognized
me...the girlie with the jug o' mouthwash....what a lovely nickname...

that morning, in my second period biology class, i got hold of a
strawberry starburst, and bit off VERY tiny pieces of it, and let them
melt in my mouth...that was my first solid food....yay!!!
lunch was miserable...i couldn't eat anything, so i just sucked back a
dr pepper(my fave) and lived with the hunger.

then, on the way out to the parking lot at the end of the day, one of the
assistant principals stopped me, because i was carrying my listerine in
my hand(the jug wouldn't fit in my backpack). he asked me"young lady,
why are you carrying that bottle of mouthwash?" i slurred"becauthe, i
jutht got my thongue pierthed and i wanna keep it clean, thee??" and
opened my mouth real wide so he could see my lovely object of pride. he
asked me if it hurt, and i shook my head no. he asked me why, and i
shrugged...but believe you me, i didn't talk too much...

the next day, the swelling had gone down enough for me to try to
chew...that didn't go too very well...i could only eat very very soft
chocolate chip cookies for almost three weeks because everytime i tried
to eat anything else, i would bite down on the top ball of my
barbell(OWCHIE!!).

it felt like forever before i could put my new toy to use. i couldn't
stick it out at anyone, i couldn't play with it, i couldn' t kiss
anyone...it bit for the first few weeks, but then i got used to its
presence in my mouth, and shortly came to adore it.

then, about six weeks later, when i was no longer afraid to play with it,
i was walking around the mall with my best friend, and rolling the bottom
ball on my lower lip...when the ball came unscrewed, and went bouncing off
through the mall...

we searched and searched for it for hours, to no avail. i had to leave it
out for the night...

the next morning, i went to the (as i know now) best tattoo shop in town
and bought another barbell(couldn't get just the bead)...this one was the
same length, but purple and with bigger balls,so i had big purple balls
in my mouth for about three years.( i still have the barbell).
then i got bored with a straight barbell(i also had a problem at work
because i kept playing with it in front of customers), so i asked one of
my friends to get me a new one for christmas. he did, and boy was it
perty....it was a short, curved 14ga with a green gem in the top bead. i
wore that for about a month, and then i kinda swallowed the gem(i bit it
accidentally one too many times). so i went back to a straight barbell,
and that's when i discovered the horrible truth...

my piercing was CROOKED!!!

i checked it several times,and i had other people look at it, and
everyone said that it was most definitely slanted to the right a little.

dammit, i was sooo pissed!!!

by this time it was way too late to let it heal and get it done again, so
i decided to sue...
fat lot of good that did me... i didn't even get my 75 bucks back...the
case was dismissed....
so i just had to live with it...
this year for christmas, i got two new barbells from my bestfriend for
christmass,
a purple glow-in-the-dark barbell and another curved jewel(what we call a
"teardrop").
i wear the teardrop almost all the time, because that helps to conceal
the crookedness.

after four years, i still have the damn thing in, and i still rather
like it, even if it is crooked.
i want more!!!!!however, i don't think that i have the guts to do it
again...
who knows, maybe i will, maybe i won't...we'll see!!!

~crysania

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submitted by: Anonymouson: 01 March 1999in
Tongue Piercing

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